A popular piece of hardware for discerning smart home hobbyists is being taken off the market: Production of the Home Assistant Yellow is officially being discontinued. This decision by Nabu Casa, the company behind the open source Home Assistant platform, marks the end of an era for the modular smart home control center.
The Yellow enjoyed great popularity among professionals as it was based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) and offered maximum customization.
- Core CM4: Free choice of CM4 with individual RAM and eMMC.
- Fast NVMe storage: Support for lightning-fast M.2 SSDs.
- Integrated wireless technology: Onboard module for Zigbee and Thread.
- PoE-capable: Power supply and network via a single Ethernet cable.
Difficult times for the modular smart home server
The main reason for the discontinuation is the uncertain availability and price fluctuations of the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. The global chip shortage in recent years has led to massive supply bottlenecks and made reliable production of the Yellow impossible. Nabu Casa is now drawing the consequences and focusing on a new strategic direction that is less dependent on components that are difficult to procure.
Looking ahead: Green as the new recommendation
As a replacement and new standard recommendation, the Home Assistant Green is coming to the fore. It offers a simple plug-and-play solution for beginners and a more stable supply chain. For users who don’t want to miss out on the performance benefits of Yellow – especially the NVMe SSD speed – there is still the option of installing Home Assistant on standard mini PCs or servers.
For those who already own a Yellow, the all-clear has been given: software support and all updates to the Home Assistant ecosystem will continue without restriction. There is no need to worry about the functionality of existing installations.
The Home Assistant Yellow was last available as a Plug & Play set with CM4 and SSD for prices starting at around 350 euros.
